Friday December 2, 2016

Inspired illustrations by Yoobee student Joe Liang are now gracing the walls of the Epic Innovation Campus in the heart of the Christchurch CBD.

Epic Innovation connects local high-tech entrepreneurs with their global counterparts, and the organisation wanted some off-the-hook artwork to inject some swagger into their four meeting rooms.

Enter stage left, Joe Liang, Diploma in Digital Design – Animation and Film Production student at Yoobee Christchurch. Epic co-founder and director Wil McLellan enlisted Joe to come up with four original, innovative posters. Pictured here, Joe’s creations depict meetings in four different moments of time – from a primitive shared lunch with gorillas and humans, to a board meeting run by aliens on a spaceship!

Joe hopes his work will provide a bit of light relief.

“I think it will be quite funny. I’m hoping my illustrations will give people a bit of a surprise when they come in for meetings,” says Joe, who worked on the project for a month.

“The meeting in the spaceship is my favourite. Everyone is interested in aliens – they’re such mysterious and cool creatures. And one day in the future, meetings could actually be like this.”

The Epic team are delighted with the results.

“The brief was very loose as we did not want to stifle the talent. The only real known component was it was art for meeting rooms. The rest was up to Joe,” says Wil.

“His illustrations are really engaging. I like the fact he used popular cartoon style art with humour to make a point. Each picture is a theme of meeting - like business lunch, brain storming and round table - and they are all very different. People connect with the humour and characters - which are comic, amplified versions of us all. I am sure they will be well received by Epic tenants and help meetings start with a smile.”

And it might not be too long before the cool creations of other Yoobee students are decorating Epic’s HQ.

“Epic is keen to give the students a public place to showcase their skills, access creative companies and attend industry and community events - so they can learn about jobs they may be interested in and opportunities for the future. Nothing is set is stone but we will keep exploring how Yoobee and Epic can work together in the future,” says Wil.